Cornerstone Alliance International

The Cornerstone International Alliance is the world’s only global alliance focused exclusively on the lower middle market.

We have vetted and combined resources of some of the best independent M&A firms globally to deliver more experience, industry expertise and overall value to lower middle market businesses owners.

What are the chances that one of the few M&A firms in your city or town is the absolute best team for the job? We enable business owners to look beyond regional resource limits and truly work with the best of the best.

BTS is a founding member of the Cornerstone International Alliance. We are part of an elite group of professional firms around the country focused on quality service to owners of businesses within the lower mid-market. The alliance is a platform to share best practices and connection to advisors with diverse experience and depth of knowledge. This relationship enables us to tap the experience and knowledge of others in the field. John Howe, Director

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From Our Founder

When I started in the industry over 19 years ago, I noticed that very few firms actually talked to each other or would share best practices other than a conference or two a year. Like several of the members of CIA, I wanted to take a leadership position in the industry to help educate and elevate the M&A community. I served as chairman of the International Business Brokers Association, as a board member for M&A Source, and founded the Wisconsin chapter of Midwest Business Broker & Intermediary Association. But still I thought we could do more. By collaborating with a smaller group of proven firms that connect on a regular basis, we could provide the very best results for each and every client.

Concurrently I saw a big issue with business owners considering the sale of their businesses. Most business owners really “didn’t know what they didn’t know” or how to tell if an M&A firm was quality or just talked a good game in an effort to get a large retainer with little chance of a successful sale. After all, they were most likely only going to choose an M&A advisor once in their life.

Little did they know how significant the consequences of choosing the wrong M&A firm would be. It could mean the difference between successfully selling their business, extending their legacy and living out their dreams or shutting it down and liquidating the physical assets for cents on the dollar, while watching their legacy evaporate after years of sacrifices and all their employees now out of work.

With the founding of CIA, we have engineered much of the risk out of the business sale process. Now, our clients can rest assured that they have the best team, strategies and resources available to them by accessing our aggregated, well vetted pool of M&A specialists – our success rate and experience speak for themselves!

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172

Aggregate Years in Business

2307+

Deals Done (and counting...)

756

Total Years of Entrepreneurship

545

Combined Years of M&A Expereience

What our clients are saying...

“Regarding our working relationship with Business Transition Strategies. After 32 years of continuous growth we hit 2009 & 2010 and like many companies we went flat and in 2010 had our first loss. At this point we knew we had to make changes if we where to succeed in this new economic environment. Business Transition Strategies (BTS), particularly John Howe and Ken Schaefer, were brought on as consultants. The BTS team came in, evaluated everything in a professional and thankfully non-threatening manner. They interacted with all employees and our professional partners. Once this was done they presented their findings to the executive group and gave very specific suggestions for improvements. This done and a plan in place, John & Ken continued to help us move forward and implement changes and make adjustments where needed. I am happy to say we are back to being a growing and profitable business and I believe BTS played a big part in making this happen. I would recommend to anyone that they include BTS as part of their business plans for the future.”